Predator
by LadyRhiyana
Summary: [COMPLETED] What separates men from animals? Rin, walking home one dark night, is about to find out.
1. I

A/N – My excuse: Begun at 11.47pm. Finished at 1.11am. I'm going to post it immediately, before I think twice and lose my nerve.

Disclaimer – I don't own. Don't sue.

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**Predator**

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_Between the idea  
__And the reality  
__Between the motion  
__And the act  
__Falls the Shadow_

_T S Eliot, 'The Hollow Men'_

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**(I)**

Someone was following her.

Rin felt a chill trickle down her spine, knew, with age-old feminine instinct, that there was something very wrong –

_Footsteps, echoing discordantly in the cold, deserted alley. _

Nervously, she drew her bag higher up on her shoulder, quickening her steps, her eyes searching desperately for help. But the dim, scattered streetlights flickered, and then went out so suddenly that she flinched.

The footsteps behind her grew closer, more confident.

Then, in the darkness before her, she saw him.

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_What is it, _someone had once asked, _that separates men from animals?_

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There was blood in his white, shining hair, and staining his hand and the sleeves of his haori. She stood, frozen to the spot, and watched him lick the blood from his fingers, his every movement precise, delicate, and so terribly, absurdly _civilised._

"They were going to rape and kill you," he said. "Why should their deaths shock you?"

She could only stare at him.

"They were men," she whispered, her voice shaking. "They were human."

"They were scum," he answered dismissively. "Animals, not worth your time or concern." She could see it in his eyes: he had forgotten about the men he had so brutally, efficiently slaughtered.

His attention, now, was focused entirely on her. He moved towards her, and she moved automatically backwards, retreating, until the dim, ghostly moonlight illuminated her face.

He stilled.

"_Rin."_

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_A/N – _There are three parts to this story. I posted them all at once, so go through and read them all.


	2. II

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**(II)**

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It was the oldest and most powerful courting gift of all, the granting of a life, or of a death. Once, he had given her life as she lay in her own blood and filth, a wretched, worthless peasant girl; once, he had spread a bundle of wolf pelts at her feet.

Once, he had destroyed anyone and anything who had ever dared to harm her.

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"_Rin wants to stay with her Sesshoumaru-sama forever…!"_

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"Why?" the woman asked, her face very white, her pulse jumping with barely restrained panic. "You could have stopped them easily. You didn't have to rip them apart."

She was afraid of him, of his capacity for violence.

"They were going to rape and kill _you,_" he said, watching her, seeing understanding dawn in her dark, familiar eyes. "No one will ever harm you, Rin."

She turned away, deliberately looking over the torn, shredded ruins of her attackers. When she spoke, it was so softly that he almost didn't hear it.

"No one except you."

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_The difference between taiyoukai and mindless, animalistic lesser youkai, _his father had once told him, _is not our greater power level, nor our ability to take human shape, but the gift of reason, of thought, and the difference – the all-important difference, Sesshoumaru – between impulse and action, desire and fulfilment. There is an animal in all of us, but we need not give in to it…_

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He escorted her to her apartment as if by right, his hand on her back a courtesy and a reminder. She had seen his claws, witnessed his strength – she knew what he could do to her in just a fraction of a second, if he so wished.

The scent of her fear was maddening, her fluttering pulse a siren call to his animal nature.

When she reached her door, the key in the lock and ready to turn, she stopped, hesitated, and looked up into his eyes. Here, in the light, he withheld no secrets from her –

And yet he allowed her the choice.

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A/N – The Inu no Taishou's words of wisdom are mine. The ideas are not new.


	3. III

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**(III) **

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She could see it in his eyes, the animal, crueller, steeped in more violence and death than the men in the alley could ever have imagined. But it was leashed, tightly restrained by training, by discipline, by hard-won patience and experience.

And, she saw, with a sense of warm, innocent recognition, by a deep, boundless well of concern for _her – _

_Do as you wish, Rin._

She held out her hand.

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In the morning, he was gone.

She stifled a sense of disappointment resumed her normal routine, as if she had never allowed a predator into her life. But sometimes she could feel a chill run down her spine, or the hair on her neck prickling with ancient awareness, and she knew that he was out there somewhere, watching her.

Three weeks later, he returned without a word of explanation; she came home to find him sprawled full length across her bed, sleeping deeply, as if he sensed no danger in her small, enclosed world. When she climbed in beside him, seated propped against the cushions, he woke for a moment, and shifted to lay his head in her lap –

_The maiden and the unicorn, _she thought fleetingly, uneasy with the connotations of that particular image. _This is power – to soften and enchant such a wild spirit…_

But there were no hunters, waiting in the shadows to spring out and slay the captured beast. And she had no desire to cage him, or use his power for her own benefit.

She let him go, content in the belief that he would return.

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Fin

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End file.
